


Block out the Ticking of the Clock and Breathe

by notebooksandlaptops



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam Young Still Has Powers (Good Omens), Angst, Aziraphale and Crowley are Warlock Dowling's Parents, Birthdays, Character Study, Crowley character study, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Crowley, Female-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Growing Old Together, M/M, Mortality, Mother-Son Relationship, Old Age, Old Married Couple, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), adam went to the Crowley School Of Gardening, at least thats the vibe i wanted to give off, but all the other characters in go have died of old age by the time this fanfiction happened, crowley using female pronouns, exploration of crowley's thoughts on mortality, goth warlock, heavy talk of death and dying, its like about death but its also hopeful and happy?, now that she has a son, okay so its low key implied warlock wrote good omens, or they might as well have been, supporting your son, visiting the stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-27 02:43:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20753036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notebooksandlaptops/pseuds/notebooksandlaptops
Summary: In a small house just outside of lower Tadfield, there lived two boys who were tied – to the second exactly – for the oldest man in the world.Crowley and Aziraphale visit their god sons at least once a year for their birthday. As they've grown older, Crowley has felt more acutely the passing of time and has learnt what mortality means.ORCrowley's exploration of mortality while sat with her pretty-much-son and his husband and the joys and fruits of a life well lived (and perhaps one last trip to the stars)





	Block out the Ticking of the Clock and Breathe

In a small house just outside of lower Tadfield, there lived two boys who were tied – to the second exactly – for the oldest man in the world.

Oldest _human, _Crowley should say, adjusting her skirt and taking a biscuit from the tray on the coffee table. Some men were ageless, but humans rarely achieved such extreme measures, though nobody could fault them for trying. Immortality was one of the obsessions humanity had retained through the ages. Every one of them was afraid of death.

_Almost _every one of them.

But then, Adam Young perhaps shouldn’t be counted among one of humanity’s lot, technically speaking. He may have _chosen _them, but so had she and Aziraphale and neither of them were any _less _demonic or divine for it. You couldn’t choose your species (often).

And love was a powerful thing. It could span millennia. It could take root. It could cling to someone like a tangible thing. And Warlock Young was entirely ordinary if not for the fact that he had fallen in love with a boy who could will the extraordinary into reality and hold him close for the many years they had been married.

Crowley tapped her foot absently as Aziraphale made tea in the other room and chatted to Adam. She found things like that kept happening. Her foot would tap anxiously, her breathing would come sharper, whenever she was around a Warlock who looked so much older than her.

She had never much minded mortality before. Humans were mortal. It was part of their charm. She’d always have Aziraphale, but humans were more—fleeting. She’d known that from the start. She’d never _not _known it. She’d never been saddened by it before.

But she had held him in her arms as he cried when he was a baby, soothed him with lullabies and changed his diapers. Now here he was – at nearly two hundred years of age – and while he looked _remarkably _good for such a number, he was still, undeniably, old.

“Adam still acts like he went to the Nanny School of Gardening, you know? I told him; our garden would look nice either way. He’s like that – they’d bend backwards for him regardless. But he has to go about shouting at the apple trees.”

He still called her Nanny though. And she still wore her Nanny smock when she came over.

“He’s a smart boy,” Crowley murmured gently.

Quiet, apart from the sound of laughter from the other room. Adam and Aziraphale got on like – to use a metaphor from the _start _of their friendship – a bookshop on fire (bad, bad, Aziraphale wouldn’t like that at all, he was still touchy and all of his collection had been restored – even the 1960’s playboy magazines that had spreads with a _certain _demon in their middle). There was lots of laughter when they were in the house together.

Warlock and Crowley often sat together. They didn’t laugh as much, but they enjoyed one another’s presence the way any mother would enjoy their son’s warmth. Because of course Warlock had his own mother, but she’d never _been _much of a mother, had she? More interested in—well, in using her son as a pawn in her marriage.

She wasn’t his mother properly. Not like Crowley had been. So, he filled her in on his life as sons were want to do and she offered him fussy advise as mothers were want to do and she tried not to think that there was a reason that mothers generally went first when it came to mortals.

Every time she saw him it became a little harder to deal with.

Now was especially hard.

Adam and Warlock had called her and Aziraphale up a year ago. They had set a date. The day they turned two hundred – four years and two days away from today’s date – they would let old age properly catch up with them. Pepper, Wensleydale, Brain, Newt, Anathema, Shadwell, Tracy—the people who would never be remembered in the history books but had given the earth far more than any other individual – those people had already gone. They didn’t want to live forever.

Crowley won’t admit to the day she begged Warlock to reconsider that.

But it’s four years. And maybe those years will be short, but there were still four of them.

She just wished she could be a little more under control of all her emotions about it. She’d never felt more helpless. _This is what humans feel, _she thought, _every second, every minute, the pull of the clock that never stops ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. Sand in the hourglass. _

She’d never understood it. Not even when she thought the world was going to end. Not until now.

But nobody could stop time. Except maybe God but she wasn’t going to intervene here, was she?

Sometimes he still cursed her. Quietly. Where Aziraphale couldn’t see it.

“Well, I wish he’d at least keep it down out there. But no. Oh, he’s lucky that he can make sure the people of Tadfield don’t realise how old we are, or that we keep winning those gardening contests. Otherwise we’d have the press in all over us and our luscious garden.”

Crowley glanced outside. Not _quite _as good as hers, but it was beautiful, yes. Prize worthy, even.

Warlock was moaning like an old wife might, but Crowley knew he was the one who’d be the happiest with the prizes. She’d imparted a bit of perfectionism in him and maybe even the desperate need for validation by the person you loved.

Funny, how she had imparted things. She had given this child things. She had taught him, and he had grown up as a product partly of her. She was perhaps the reason he still wore all black. She was the reason he continued to die his hair the same colour as his clothes when Adam had long since let himself go grey. She was the reason that he still came out with odd things from time to time. She was a part of him. He was a part of her. And when he left—

Aziraphale said it was best not to think of such things, at least for the next couple of years. He pointed out that their godsons were happy. He pointed out that their godsons had _lived. _And oh, had they lived. They’d seen the world over twice. They’d had a wedding of mass proportions. They’d had a great love. Once Crowley had taken them to see some of her favourite stars as a golden anniversary present.

They’d _lived. _And their decision was theirs and theirs alone to make. They were ready for whatever came next and they still had _years _left.

But Aziraphale had such trust that God would care for them and Crowley—she wanted to. She wanted to trust. Maybe she did. She certainly had gotten over begging Adam to keep up their longevity. She knew they’d be safe, and she even believed they’d be together.

Maybe her sadness then, came from knowing she’d never get to see them again. They’d be lost to her. Her child would be lost to her.

A tissue was suddenly in front of her face. She blinked at it, frowning.

“Nanny, you’re crying again,” Warlock murmured.

Oh. Oh, she was.

She reached out and took it, dabbed at her eyes.

Warlock sighed. “You’ll ruin your mascara, Nanny.”

“I know,” she sighed, “I’m so sorry, love. It’s your birthday in the next few days. This is supposed to be a fun visit.”

Warlock nodded, reaching out, putting a hand on her knee. “Nanny, it _is _a fun visit. You’re here. And we wouldn’t ask you not to be upset. We know you’ll miss us. But it’s _years _away, Nanny, and we’ve got a life to live between now and then. Adam’s going to keep winning those awful gardening competitions and I’m going to continue to post on the hellscape that is Tumblr – thank you for that one by the way – and we’re going to see you all the time.”

Crowley took a deep breath, pocketed the tissue.

“Still.” Crowley held. Then—“Tell me about your latest short story?”

“Oh, well. Actually, I’ve been working on my novel.” Warlock had written a wonderful selection of children’s short stories and Novella. They were some of the only books Crowley had ever bothered to read, and Aziraphale had the whole collection of first editions signed by the author in his collection.

“Your novel?”

“Yeah, been working on it for a while. Don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Leave it for you and Aziraphale to decide, I think,” He tapped a wrinkled hand on the side. “See, I sort of kind of based it on my life. Well. Some of it. The love of it. Adam. And my…upbringing. You two feature quite heavily in that respect.”

“Oh?” And now she’s smiling, just a little. Her boy, so talented.

“Yeah. It’s a real whirlwind. But it’s been so long and nobody remembers the events anyway…I thought perhaps it was good for it to be recorded somewhere. Even if it’s not in the history books. Of course, Adam’s not so sure. He thinks it’ll cause problems for you with the head offices. I’ve tried to be as discreet as possible with your relationship, but—”

Crowley shook her head, “we haven’t heard from the head offices in almost two decades. I think we’ll be okay.”

Warlock grins. “Good. I can’t wait to show you.”

Nanny finds it in her to keep returning the grin. Her boy. And she really does love him.

“Come here, darling boy, indulge an old woman,” she says finally. They’ll be more to say later, and she’ll feel less melancholy and panicky later too. Adam and Warlock’s birthday was always a treat. They always went all out. It was a celebration of love and happiness, and they invited whoever they were close with at the time – and they always let Aziraphale do a bit of a gavotte, seen as he never got the chance to any other time.

But for now, she felt her body shifting, and the large snake that she was at heart materialising, wrapping its way around her godsons – her _son’s _– body and holding him close, her son stroking her forehead. It was peaceful. It was safe. She’d done this for him when she was a baby and she’d do it for him until she couldn’t any longer.

She blocked out the ticking of the clock and focused on the now, and breathed.

-///-

A while later Aziraphale and Adam returned from the kitchen, a rather old and grey Dog barking at the large snake it had found in its living room (Crowley thought this was rather bad form. They were basically of the same stock, hellhound and demon, but then, Dog had forgotten a lot of what it was to be a hellhound a long time ago).

“So!” Aziraphale clapped his hands happily after he’d set down a tray with sandwiches and hot chocolates. “Adam and I were just talking about the subject of a birthday present this year.”

Adam had asked for outlandish things every year since they met him. It even rubbed off on his husband, just a little. Bikes with fifty gears and a flag on the back when he turned twelve, a month-long trip to Canada squeezed into a fortnight when he was seventy-two. Some things didn’t change.

“You’re going to be excited about this one, Aunty Crow,” Adam grinned.

“Yes,” Warlock’s voice rumbled, “We were hoping, both of you, if you wouldn’t mind…we’d like to see the stars, one last time.”

-///-

Warlock Young-Crowley-Aziraphale-Dowlings book was a best selling hit and an instant classic when it was published on the first anniversary of the year of his death.

For the five hundred years literature scholars from all over came to see the little grave in the small village of Tadfield, erected in the woods close by the authors husband’s childhood home:

_Here lies Warlock, Adam and Dog who all lived life full to the brim and who will be with one another always. _

There’s no dates on the grave though some people wonder at just how old the two men must have been when they passed.

A woman in all black leaves flowers there every year – great beautiful flowers and plants that never wilt. So many years pass – until she herself is a legend. Local townsfolk still say that she can be seen stood there with her husband dressed always in white, laying flowers once a year.

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of a very stressful week of a family member being admitted to hospital. I wrote it when I couldn't sleep, so I hope it's not too raw.
> 
> This is probably the most angsty thing I've written in a while. I tried to make it both angsty and somewhat hopeful - Warlock and Adam are at peace with all of this after all and have lived a long and happy life. In my head its a sort of stardust thing where they know death isn't the end and they've chosen when to go peacefully. But...angst. 
> 
> I tried to tag it as best as possible too - but let me know if you think any tags should be added to cover my bases. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed regardless! Comments and Kudos mean the world to me.


End file.
